Thursday, January 7, 2016

The
right to bear arms should never trump the right to live.Anthea
Butler

Pants
On Fire:
Despite Mr. Trump's claims and his inability to tell North Africa
from South Texas, since 2009 more Mexican immigrants have snuck out
of the US than have snuck in.

Test
Case: “It occurs to me that the best move right now, for
everyone else, is for (unarmed) groups of blacks, Muslims, and
OWS-types to go occupy a federal building near them. Right now.
Mirror the wingnuts, except without weapons, and peaceful but firm,
and without secession threats but rather calls for justice and
sanity.” [HT: McMike in 'Comments', SAR 16006]

Good
Hands: Cars
now come equipped with sensors
that record (and can transmit- but only if you agree, they say)
nearly everything you do; how fast you accelerate, how sharply you
brake,
how fast you are going (and they can compare that to the posted
speeds), where you go (and how often you park in front of a bar), how
far you drive and when. And your insurance company wants you to send
them that information. For your own good, they say.

War
Chests: Why
are the Republican wannabes backing Saudi Arabia in its confrontation
with Iran? 1) They're in favor of war, anywhere, anytime. 2) They
want to punish Iran for Obama's nuclear treaty. 3) Israel. 4)
Money. And the answer is 'all of the above', but 'money from
American Jews' gets full credit..

You
Pays Your Money, Or Not:
Bloomberg reports that new car sales in the US in December were
“down, exceptionally weak.” Over at the WSJ, the same car sales
for the same period were seen as “up and strong.”

Self-determination,
Not self-delusion:
The only way a sovereign people can control their destiny within a
sovereign nation is for that nation to control its own money. That
lets out every member of the eurozone. Ask a Greek. Or the people
of Ireland, Spain, and Portugal.

Even though the Saudis sent kids over to bomb our planes and buildings, and despite periodic OPEC collusion meddling, when you survey the middle east - particularly through a Reaganite cold war "friendly dictator" proxy lens - the Saudis are still the best option among all the bad options. They may be, in fact, the last of the old school cold war model dictatorship client state relationships we have.

Besides, we tried cutting out the middle man with Iraq, and look how miserably that turned out.

So, the GOP clings to the Saudis. I can almost hear Kissinger croaking his approval.

If we use he fact that they can keep the economy from crashing indefinitely [due to all money being funny] which is to say 'by rights' the economy should have collapsed decades ago but it hasn't (mostly for reasons nobody can explain!)

So far they have miraculously avoided 'food riots' (despite every local food pantry in the nation being in 'crisis mode' since the collapse of the housing market...so something is keeping them supplied.)

Naturally, when you eviscerate your customer base by shipping all the work to the ficticious 'cheaper there', it is no surprise that conventionally trained pundits are whispering, sotto voce, stock market collapse.

Just as interesting is how you can no longer find 5% interest on a regular saving account anymore due to the advent of the 'billionaires'. I haven't done the math but the amount would be staggering, even on a daily basis (and we don't have the economic horsepower to generate that kind of, er, 'juice', considering there are thousands of them with multiple billions, albeit, most of it off-shore.

There is no need for this 'hand-waving' (mostly so a few can be rich.) I belabor the obvious when I opine that capitalism has crashed and burned but nobody knows how to replace it...well , I know but those in power would rather continue to fiddle while the world crumbles under it's own growing toxicity than embrace desperately needed change.

Georgee is, I think, quite right in noting "that capitalism has crashed and burned but nobody knows how to replace it." I also am sure that most of us have no idea that our debt/extractive model no longer works.

I was just sitting down to write on that genral topic when Gail Tverberg's latest - Oil Limits and the End of the Debt Supercycle (see ref on the left) dropped onto my desk.

Over the years, she has convinced me that all this fuss and bother in the world at large is, indeed, linked to the Oil biddness. That may be my own weakness to want to see unifying trends in the background, but what they hey, they seem to be there to me!

I'm waiting to see if the big dust up kicks off between the Saudi's and the Persian's, or if the Turks manage to really tweak the Russians. There seems to be no end to the potential conflicts you can imagine with all the chaos kicking up anywhere we look.

Sometimes I think the race for POTUS is a calming refuge in comparison to the world situation. I can't even begin to contemplate a Trump campaign, much less a presidency. On the other side I can't imagine HRC surviving her supporters long enough to get elected. What fun!

Sovereign money: Money isn't enough by far, that's one lesson Sec. Clinton and Pres. Obama have taught every little country, whether the new democracy of Haiti or the dictator in Korea. Expect a lot more sales for nuclear centrifuges. Anyone who thinks Iran is giving up it's program it nuts. Obama just decided it was more profitable for him and his friends to not pick a war that would end quickly and not in our favor, vs one that drags on and on at a slow bake.

Our Motto

Keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.